


Hostile Eighteen

by pugosupo



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon Typical Violence, EVENTUALLY BUFFY/FAITH, F/F, This has been kicking around in my head for years so hopefully i will Keep Writing it, huh joss? huh? what if?, i.e. faith and riley, reference to canon dubious consent, what if faith got on screen character development
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 06:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17862371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugosupo/pseuds/pugosupo
Summary: Instead of escaping to Los Angeles after swapping bodies with Buffy, Faith is captured by The Initiative and used as a guinea pig for a behaviour modification chip Professor Walsh is testing for hypothetical use on Buffy. Faith finds herself almost helpless and, after escaping the compound, turns to Buffy for help. Buffy is not ready to forget the past, and forgiveness has to be earned.





	Hostile Eighteen

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: I don't intend to dwell on the dub/non con between Riley and Faith, but it will be mentioned more than it was on the show (i.e. more than once)

Faith was livid. This, in itself, was not out of the ordinary. She had woken up with a stiff neck and a split lip on the cold concrete floor of a white room, her back pressed up against a padded wall and her arms numb from the weight of her head. She was disoriented and she was annoyed. 

The air smelled of hospital disinfectant and stale air, which was being piped in through a small metal grate in the ceiling. Too small to fit through, she noted almost subconsciously. The fluorescent lights bounced off the pure white of the walls and floor, hitting her eyes as aggressively as light can.

Typical, she thought. She’d only woken up twice in the last year, and both times the world she woke up to was as confusing as it was unwelcoming. She considered closing her eyes and willing herself back into a coma for another month or so.

Maybe next year would be luckier.

But her survival instincts were stronger than her desire to check back out of life. The last thing she remembered was leaving Buffy at the altar of the church.

Faith breezed past any consideration of her choice of words there, and moved on to the task at hand.

The room was completely silent and cold. If she was still in California she would have to be underground or in a bunker in the desert. Sunnydale wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis but there was always some sound. 

Teens in Sunnydale made the most of their short lives with frequent drunken hooliganism.

Jesus, she’d spent far too much time in Buffy’s brain.

She wondered, idly, if Buffy had picked anything up from her time in her body.

Focus, Faith.

She heaved a sigh, broadcasting her irritation to whoever might be watching or listening - thought she hadn’t seen any cameras, a lifetime of petty theft had taught her to always assume there were cameras.

Every surface was spotless and polished to a shine, reflecting the bright lights back at her. It was, by a tragically small margin, the plainest room Faith had ever woken up in, and she’d had a college-boy-in-a-band phase, but at least those rooms had included a mattress, even if it was in the middle of the floor.

There were three padded white walls, and a fourth wall made of a solid piece of glass or clear perspex.

She searched the walls for weak points she might exploit, prodding and tearing at the padding, but the wall behind was solid poured concrete. The window looked like the best bet. The enclosed space was already making her feel like a rat in a trap, and smashing windows was always fun. Well, almost always. Of course Buffy had found a way to ruin that pastime.

Buffy, again. Couldn’t she have a moment’s piece without Buffy invading her thoughts, all judgy and blonde, butting into every train of thought like she owned the place.

God, even looking at Buffy’s expressions in the mirror could make her feel guilty. She could still see her own face, bruised and bloody on the floor of a church, blurry through the tears in her own - in Buffy’s own eyes. 

She just wanted to beat that face into a pulp.

But there were more important things to think about. She buried the thoughts, and the feelings that they had come with, and set to work.

After inspecting the glass, estimating its strength, coming to the realisation that it was more than likely stronger than she was, Faith decided to try and smash it into the window anyway. She’d done more than enough thinking and planning, it had been a whole five minutes.

She was on the run up to her third attempt when the door at the end of the corridor buzzed and a hoard of lab-coated squints and camouflaged military stooges came flooding out, armed with clip-boards and assault rifles, respectively. Among them was the familiar face of Buffy’s current squeeze, what’s-his-name. Chet? Brandon? Paul? He looked like a Paul. He talked like a Paul, too. 

Faith ignored them - that was a problem for after she broke the glass, and ran up into the glass, shoulder first. 

“Fruitless effort.” Said one of the squints, a blonde women who like she was about 50 years old and likely to give unsolicited life advice at any moment. “Though, as I understand it, I shouldn’t expect much more from you, left to your own devices.” 

“No, I’m pretty sure I heard it crack that time, actually.” Faith spat back as sweat began to bead on her forehead. She ran at it again, for emphasis. The glass seemed to bow in place, but showed no signs of cracking. Her shoulder was going to have a wicked bruise.

“This is kidnapping, Professor.” The boyfriend said. What the hell kind of professor is grabbing people off the street and locking them up in some kind of bunker prison? Faith wondered if she maybe shouldn’t have dropped out in high school. Maybe there was a place for her in higher education. “This has gone too far. We can’t just be grabbing humans off the street.” He continued. A few of the surrounding idiots bobbed their head in agreement. Faith made a mental note of this - the guy seemed to be pretty high up in the ranks, fucking somehow, so she should probably get rid of him first, scatter the troops.

“She’s not human.” The professor said. “She’s a slayer, Riley.”

“Uh, excuse me.” Faith interjected, adopting her preferred “like I give a fuck” posture, which she had often practiced in the mirror, “She is very much human and is also right here. Riley, come on.” She turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. 

God, why the hell was everyone in Sunnydale so goddamn puritanical about sex? It was a decent enough way to pass the time, and a pretty good way to work out some nervous energy or distract yourself from things you didn’t want to be thinking about. Why couldn’t other people just check out and not get bogged down in the feelings of it all? Why did it matter if it was her or Buffy in Buffy’s head, it’s all just physical. 

“Slayers are human.” Riley was still refusing to acknowledge her at all, despite his words. Buffy might be human, but he wasn’t exactly acting like Faith was. Or maybe military people just have a different idea of what human meant. Who’s to say. She smashed into the glass again.

“Slayers are an unknown quantity.” The professor replies. 

“There’s actually only two of us.” Faith explained. The professor ignored her, and carried on.

“We have no idea what they are capable of, we don’t know if the slayer will be a safety hazard. She has so far proven stronger than anything else we’ve been able to study to any degree whatsoever, and none of us can be certain she isn’t a threat to us.”

God, of course Faith would get kidnapped by Buffy’s number one fans.

“Is this hell?” She wondered aloud, “Am I in hell? Do I have to just listen to the Buffy Positivity Hour for an eternity?”

“She’s not a threat.” Riley continued to ignore her.

“Riley, you’re allowing your personal interest to cloud your judgement. It would be foolish to break Buffy’s trust at this stage, and I doubt she would be interested in any serious scientific study of her power. This is the next best thing.”

“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“We run tests on this slayer, and we see what we can learn about Buffy through her. It’s the safest alternative. It’s the only way we can promise no harm will come to Buffy.”

Faith threw herself at the window again. 

“It’s unethical.”

“It’s necessary. She’s the perfect test subject for our work on inhibitor chips. Faith is an example of how much can go wrong when a slayer goes dark. She’s a murderer. She’s turned on everyone who ever tried to help her.” 

Faith made a great show of rolling her eyes, really putting her back into it. Riley finally looked over at her, considering her for a moment in silence, before sighing.

The professor clearly took his silence as assent, and led the group back down the corridor, the door closing behind them with the metallic clunk of a heavy bolt sliding into place. 

Faith leant against the back wall, and slid down to the floor, curling up into a ball, desperately fighting the hyperventilation as the blind panic set in.


End file.
